With the news of the cancellation of 'One Life To Live', it got me to thinking back to one of the more outrageous storylines from Llanview, Pennsylvania. It wasn't well-received critically, and I'm not too sure how the fans thought about it, but in the grand schemes of Toobworld? I thought it was fantastic!Several of the show's characters found themselves trapped below the Earth in a lost underground civilization called "Eterna" (or "Eternia"). And that hidden realm tied into one of the stories to be found in 'Cliffhangers' back in the late 1970's - "The Secret Empire".

In that corner of the realm, the underground world was known as Chimera and was located under Wyoming. (I think my friend Mark came from Chimera. He claims to be from Wyoming, but I don't know......)

So first up, here's a five part story culled from the Eterna storyline on 'One Life To Live':

My friend Michael Cleary is currently working on two more posts for Inner Toob, one of which would be about Mr. Lucas as seen in the early years of 'Are You Being Served?'

I offered to collect the frame grabs of Trevor Bannister, including some from his appearance in an episode of 'Keeping Up Appearances'. So apparently as I was doing so on Thursday, or probably a bit earlier due to the time difference, Mr. Bannister died of a heart attack.

Here's the scene he did with Hyacinth Bucket, as played by Patricia Routledge.....

From Wikipedia:Helene Anna Held (March 8, 1872 – August 12, 1918) was a Polish-born stage performer, most often associated with impresario Florenz Ziegfeld, her common-law husband.

From 1905 Held enjoyed several successes on Broadway which apart from bolstering Ziegfeld's fortune, made her a millionaire in her own right. Ziegfeld's talent for creating publicity stunts ensured that Held's name remained well known. Held suggested the format for what would become the famous Ziegfeld Follies in 1907, and helped Ziegfeld establish the most lucrative phase of his career. Held could not perform in the first Follies in 1908 as she had become pregnant by Ziegfeld. She later miscarried or had an abortion.

In 1909 he began an affair with the actress Lilliane Lorraine. Held remained hopeful that his fascination would pass and he would return to her, but instead he turned his attentions to another actress Billie Burke, whom he would marry in 1914.

I don't know if ABC shocked the TV industry by canceling two of their veteran soap operas - 'All My Children' and 'One Life To Live' - but they certainly shocked those shows' viewers. Both had been on the air for over 40 years each. They had attention-grabbing storylines over the years, and 'AMC' created its own headlines when Susan Lucci, who played Erica Kane, went a record 18 years without winning the Daytime Emmy award for Best Actress. Meanwhile, Erika Slezak won six of the statuettes for playing Victoria Lord and holds the record for that feat.

Here's part of the statement released by ABC Daytime president Brian Fons:

“While we are excited about our new shows and the shift in our business, I can’t help but recognize how bittersweet the change is. We are taking this bold step to expand our business because viewers are looking for different types of programming these days. They are telling us there is room for informative, authentic and fun shows that are relatable, offer a wide variety of opinions and focus on ‘real life’ takeaways."

Yeah, I'll just bet they are.

How do I read that? ABC wants to make more money for their executives (May they be nibbled to death by ducks!) by getting rid of all those expensive actors and by televising schlock instead.

What will replace these shows? 'The Chew', a food-themed talk show, and 'The Revolution' a lifestyle makeover show.

Wow. I bet they will have the audience hooked like 'Lost' used to do....

If those rich corporate bastards are going to be making so much money by putting people out of work, the government should start charging them for access to the airwaves.

Oh, I forgot. The government is owned by rich corporate bastards.

Okay, I admit that I didn't watch 'All My Children', but I did watch 'One Life To Live' for a few years back in the 1980's. (Dan Lauria, whom I knew in college, was in it at the time. And besides, if Mary Brooks like it.....)

And I never watched other recently departed soaps like 'Guiding Light', 'Another World', 'As The World Turns', 'Port Charles' and 'Passons'. They may have all be losing audiences, but there were many people out there who did still watch them and who invested a lot in those worlds.

Toobworld becomes a little poorer with the loss of these shows.

The last episode for 'All My Children' will be in September of this year. 'One Life To Live' ends its run in January of 2012.....

Today is the birthday of one of my dearest friends, Gosia Cleary, the mother of my god-daughter Rhiannon. And it's in her honor that today's "As Seen On TV" showcase features one of the greatest people to come out of her homeland......

KAROL WOJTYLA

AS SEEN IN:

"Pope John Paul II"

AS PLAYED BY:Cary Elwes

From Wikipedia:On completion of his studies at the seminary in Kraków, Karol Wojtyla was ordained as a priest on All Saints' Day, 1 November 1946, by the Archbishop of Kraków, Cardinal Sapieha. He was then sent to study theology in Rome, at the Pontifical International Athenaeum Angelicum, where he earned a licentiate and later a doctorate in sacred theology. This doctorate, the first of two, was based on the Latin dissertation The Doctrine of Faith According to Saint John of the Cross. He returned to Poland in the summer of 1948 with his first pastoral assignment in the village of Niegowic, fifteen miles from Kraków. Arriving at Niegowic during harvest time, his first action was to kneel down and kiss the ground. This gesture, adapted from French saint Jean Marie Baptiste Vianney, would become one of his ‘trademarks’ during his Papacy.

In March 1949, he was transferred to the parish of Saint Florian in Kraków. He taught ethics at the Jagiellonian University and subsequently at the Catholic University of Lublin. While teaching, Wojtyla gathered a group of about 20 young people, who began to call themselves Rodzinka, the "little family". They met for prayer, philosophical discussion, and helping the blind and sick. The group eventually grew to approximately 200 participants, and their activities expanded to include annual skiing and kayaking trips. In 1954 he earned a second doctorate, in philosophy, evaluating the feasibility of a Catholic ethic based on the ethical system of phenomenologist Max Scheler. However, the Communist authorities' intervention prevented his receiving the degree until 1957.

During this period, Wojtyla wrote a series of articles in Kraków's Catholic newspaper Tygodnik Powszechny ("Universal Weekly") dealing with contemporary church issues. He also focused on creating original literary work during his first dozen years as a priest. War, life under Communism, and his pastoral responsibilities all fed his poetry and plays. However, he published his work under two pseudonyms – Andrzej Jawien and Stanislaw Andrzej Gruda – to distinguish his literary from his religious writings (which were published under his own name) and also so that his literary works would be considered on their own merits. In 1960, Wojtyla published the influential theological book Love and Responsibility, a defence of the traditional Church teachings on marriage from a new philosophical standpoint.BCnU!

Westeros is the mythical realm in George R.R. Martin's book series from which "Game Of Thrones" was adapted for television. (For Toobworld purposes only, Westeros is located on the planet Mondas.) Recently there's been a bit of a feud online, after Martin dissed the ending to 'Lost' and Lindelof didn't take it too kindly.....

My thanks to Rob of "The Medium Is Not Enough" (Link to the Left, Lostaways!) for alerting me to this video!

And now a little something different for the "As Seen On TV" showcase for my day off.....

"THE WIZARD OF ID"

The Wizard - Jim HensonThe King - Jerry JuhlSpook - Jim Henson

From Wikipedia:"The Wizard of Id" is a daily newspaper comic strip created by American cartoonists Brant Parker and Johnny Hart. Beginning in 1964, the strip follows the antics of a large cast of characters in a shabby medieval kingdom called "Id". From time to time, the King refers to his subjects as "Idiots". (The title is a play on "The Wizard of Oz", combined with the Freudian psychological term Id, which represents the instinctive and primal part of the human psyche.)

In 1997 Brant Parker passed his duties on to his son, Jeff Parker, who had already been involved with creating Id for a decade. As of late 2002, the strip appears in some 1,000 newspapers all over the world, syndicated by Creators Syndicate.

In 1969, Jim Henson and Don Sahlin produced a test pilot for "The Wizard of Id". By the time interest was expressed in the concept Henson was deeply involved in other projects and decided to not pursue it any further.

While doing the blog post about the Missing Link connection between 'The Mentalist' and 'Columbo', I re-watched the 'Columbo' episode "Murder By The Book" again, perhaps the first time since it first aired back in 1971!

And it gave me an idea for another connection, this time for a Theory of Relateeveety with off-beat one-season series from HBO a few years ago.....

As I watched "Murder By The Book", it occurred to me that there was a flaw in Ken Franklin's motive for killing his former writing partner Jim Ferris. Franklin's plan was to live off what he would already be getting for being one half of the writing "team" on the Mrs. Melville series of books, claiming that the trauma of Jim's murder would force him to retire from the profession entirely and never write again. He killed Jim because he didn't want it to become known that Jim was the one with the talent once Jim started writing on his own and that anything Ken wrote would display none of the style seen in their mystery novels.

But Jim Ferris' wife Joanna already knew that secret, and she let Lt. Columbo know about it. Ken wasn't probably too concerned with the Lieutenant knowing - he could always claim that it was sour grapes on Joanna's part. But the longer Joanna stayed alive, the longer that "rumor" would be out there, as she would find options in getting the word spread that Jim was the only one writing the mysteries for most of the franchise's run.

So it's a good thing that Lt. Columbo collared Franklin when he did, because it might have come to the point where the writer would have been forced to kill Joanna Ferris as well (probably making it look like an accident in order to avoid suspicion.)

And within the "reality"* of Toobworld, it may have been a very good thing indeed, because it's pozz'ble, just pozz'ble, that - even though she didn't know about it during the course of the episode - Joanna was pregnant with Jim's child......

For this theory of relateeveety, I'm making the claim that she gave birth to a boy, whom she named James, Jr. after his late father. But as he grew up, without the influence of a father to guide him, James Ferris Jr. squandered his opportunities, backed by whatever he inherited of his father's talent and fortune, to make something noteworthy of himself. He rebelled against his mother's wishes, and even spurned his legacy by taking on the nickname of "Jake" rather than being known as "James" or "Jimmy" like his father.

And here's what we know about Jake Ferris in the main Toobworld:

Jake Ferris is Linc's business partner in Stinkweed. He first appears in "His Visit: Day Six".

One of Linc's closest pals, and number one guy at Stinkweed, Jake's brought the company's board to meet Linc in Imperial Beach. Hoping to get things back on track, he's wholly unprepared for Linc's assertion that something miraculous transpired with Shaun Yost. With millions of dollars at stake, indulging what he perceives as Linc's mid-life crisis hardly tops Jake's priorities, yet something in him is beginning to second-guess his own pragmatic perception of the world.

That comes courtesy of the 'John From Cincinnati' Wiki.

So that's my claim - that Jim and Joanna Ferris had a son, born after the death of his father, who grew up to work as a surfing promoter and was known to the world as Jake Ferris.

"Murder By The Book" took place in 1971, and if Joanna was pregnant then she certainly wasn't showing during the episode. Therefore, her child would have been born in 1972, making him two years older than an actor by the name of Mark-Paul Gosselaar, who bears a striking resemblance to Jake......

From Wikipedia:Martin Van Buren (December 5, 1782 – July 24, 1862) was the eighth President of the United States (1837-1841). Before his presidency, he was the eighth Vice President (1833–1837) and the 10th Secretary of State under Andrew Jackson (1829–1831).

His administration was largely characterized by the economic hardship of his time, the Panic of 1837. He was scapegoated for the depression and called "Martin Van Ruin" by his political opponents. Van Buren was voted out of office after four years, losing to Whig candidate William Henry Harrison.

In 1839, Joseph Smith, Jr., the founder of the Latter Day Saint movement visited Van Buren to plead for the U.S. to help roughly 20,000 Mormon settlers of Independence, Missouri, who were forced from the state during the 1838 Mormon War there. The Governor of Missouri, Lilburn Boggs, had issued an executive order on October 27, 1838, known as the "Extermination Order". It authorized troops to use force against Mormons to "exterminate or drive [them] from the state."

In 1839, after moving to Illinois, Smith and his party appealed to members of Congress and to President Van Buren to intercede for the Mormons. According to Smith's grandnephew, Van Buren said to Smith, "Your cause is just, but I can do nothing for you; if I take up for you I shall lose the vote of Missouri."

This post deals with the most recent episode of 'The Mentalist' ("Every Rose Has Its Thorn") and by necessity I'll have to discuss the solution to the murder. If you have it stored on your DVR for later viewing, you'd be well off to take a hike to some other blog for the time being.

But first, let's talk about Lt. 'Columbo'. And by the way, I'll be giving away quite a few solutions to the murders on that series; if you haven't seen this classic already, there's no hope for you......

The rumpled detective gets mentioned a lot in other shows, usually as a pop culture reference nickname for another character. ("Nice going, Columbo!" - that sort of thing.) Most of these are evenly divided between treating Columbo as a real person and as a TV show.

For instance, while working under an assumed name at a car wash, Adrian Monk solved a crime; the local paper dubbed 'Monk as "The Car Wash Columbo".

No matter where they live in Toobworld, by now everybody should have heard of the LAPD detective.

How could they not? The Lieutenant must have received a lot of publicity after solving murders committed by such famous people as a symphony conductor, a wunderkind film director, the host for a cooking show and the host for a reality crime program, a nationally syndicated radio talk show host, the star of a TV detective series, a couple of fading queens of the silver screen, a world chess champion, and a senatorial candidate (who may have actually won the election just as he was being arrested.) Columbo was involved in at least three international incidents - at the Surian consulate in Los Angeles, across the border in Mexico, and one homicide investigation in London that may brought even more notice since it involved two luminaries of the British theatre.

All of which would have thrust Lt. Columbo into the spotlight, first as part of the news cycle and then into the TV show which apparently was made about him and which also starred the actor Peter Falk.

Perhaps his exploits as a homicide detective would have interested a book publisher (except for Riley Greenleaf, of course!) It's pozz'ble, just pozz'ble, that since the Lieutenant must surely have retired since we saw him last on the small screen, that his story has been published as a biography going into great detail about his most prominent cases. (And I think Martin Ross would agree with me that "Just One More Thing" would be a good title for this book!)

If so, I think Erica Flynn, who operated a very profitable match-making service with her husband, not only read such a book, but also used it as a "Blueprint For Murder" (Tee to the Hee!) in the slaying of her husband in that aforementioned episode of 'The Mentalist'.

(Sure, she could also have picked up the idea from the TV show that apparently was made in Toobworld about 'Columbo' - mentioned in such shows as 'NCIS', 'Sanford & Son' and 'Are You Being Served?' But I prefer the literary route.....)

She would have found her inspiration in the chapter about Dr. Bart Kepple. (Perhaps that chapter title might be the same as the TV series episode - "Double Exposure".) Kepple made motivational films, often using subliminal cuts, and sometimes he resorted to blackmailing his clients. When one of those clients balked and threatened to ruin him, Kepple murdered him. (And also murdered a poor schlub of a film projectionist who had figured it out and threatened to blackmail him.)

But Kepple made it look like he was onstage narrating the latest film when the client got shot. If she had read about this case, Erica Flynn may have adapted this idea for her own purposes: While a match-making client thought that Erica was in the engineer's sound booth asking her questions for a profile video, it was actually Erica's besotted assistant in the booth, using a recorder with her pre-taped questions. Meanwhile, Erica went to the marina and gunned down her husband.

She would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn't for those meddling kids - er, if it wasn't for 'The Mentalist', Patrick Jane. The CBI consultant knew just from watching the cool, self-satisfied way in which Erica applied her lipstick, after being questioned by CBI agent Kimball Cho, that she was guilty of killing her husband. But despite his track record in solving cases by how he could "read" the guilty parties, that was never going to be allowed in court as evidence against her. Jane was going to need proof.

Now, the thing about this alleged book about Lt. Columbo is that Erica Flynn wouldn't be the only person to have read it. And an investigator like Columbo would probably be of interest to someone like Patrick Jane, because of the way the Lieutenant could "read" his suspects and then play them, string them along until he nailed them for the murder.

Now, sometimes, Columbo had to wait until the evidence led him to his prime suspect. (Two of the best examples of this would be the murder investigations cod-named "Identity Crisis" and "Mind Over Mayhem".) But there were times when it could only be chalked up to an intuitive sense of reading a person that allowed Columbo to zero in on somebody right away without worrying about evidence. (It's the only way to excuse sloppy script-writing for an episode like "Murder With Too Many Notes".)

So a detective like that would be of interest to Jane and he might have read this biography of Columbo at some point off-screen, away from our prying eyes - either up in the loft or right there on the couch in the office.

So if this book about Columbo existed, and if Patrick Jane read it, he may have remembered that "Double Exposure" case from which Erica Flynn cribbed the method of murder. And having done so, it may have put him in mind to remember some of the ways Columbo had to resort to tricking his suspects into either confessing to the crime, or in some way proving their own guilt.

Among those ways - threatening to arrest the child of the killer ("Mind Over Mayhem", "An Old-Fashioned Murder"), goading them into showing off ("The Bye-Bye Sky-High IQ Murder Case" - one of the worst 'Columbo' episode titles ever!), goading them into revealing details only the killer would know or be responsible for ("Suitable For Framing", "A Deadly State Of Mind"), goading them into trying to kill him ("Murder Under Glass", "How To Dial A Murder"), and making the killer think he had found an important clue ("Short Fuse", "Double Exposure", "Requiem For A Falling Star", "Negative Reaction", "Death Lends A Hand", "Any Old Port In The Storm").

But it looks like Patrick Jane found his inspiration in what may have been the first case Columbo ever solved once he became a lieutenant - what came to be known as "Prescription: Murder".

(This case may have been fictionalized by the mystery writing team of Ken Franklin and Jim Ferris for their "Mrs. Melville" series of novels. As such, this could be the book in which Patrick Jane found his inspiration. Ironically, Columbo would come to have an even more personal connection to the writing team when Franklin murdered his partner Ferris.)

In the "Prescription: Murder" case, Dr. Ray Flemming murdered his wife and made it look like a burglary. His alibi was that he was on a trip to Mexico and it all hinged on a collaborator - a young actress who was not only his patient, but also his mistress.

This actress was fragile of mind and eventually Lt. Columbo had to break the news to Dr. Flemming that she had killed herself, probably because of the pressures brought on by the murder investigation. Feeling smug and secure by this unexpected turn of events, Dr. Flemming practically boasted that he never had feelings for her and that she was merely a useful tool.

And that's when this supposedly dead young woman stepped out from where she was hiding, now aware of the Truth and ready to testify against the good doctor.

So this is the trick that Jane pulled on Erica Flynn - making her think that her delusional assistant who was in love with her had taken his own life. And feeling superior to the CBI consultant, she also sneered that she never really loved the young man.

And abra cadabra, he's no longer a cadaver! (Paraphrasing a line from David Addison of the Moonlight Detective Agency.....)

There are no new plots in the world, just variations on what has come before. But if you're going to lift a plotline, make sure you take it from the very best. Levinson & Link, the creators of 'Columbo', knew this - so they stole from themselves! They took the best murder scenario ever on 'Burke's Law' (magician sealed in coffin at bottom of a pool is shot dead) and adapted it for 'Blacke's Magic' before it reappeared in an episode of the 'Burke's Law' sequel in the early 1990's. (The fact that he never remembered the original solution was the "proof" for my argument that Amos Burke was entering the early stages of Alzheimer's.)

So I tip my hat to the writer of this episode of 'The Mentalist' if he did knowingly lift those two plotlines from 'Columbo'. He O'Bviously appreciates the good stuff. And if it was just a coincidence, then great minds do think alike.

March 29th marked the 163rd anniversary of the death of fur magnate John Jacob Astor I, who was the richest man in the country at the time of his passing. Seeing that mentioned in that day's list of notable births and deaths put me in mind of Astor's great-grandson, John Jacob IV, who perished on board the Titanic 99 years ago this coming Friday.

Astor was played on TV twice, but it's Hylands' portrayal which comes closest to the way the real John Jacob Astor IV looked.

I haven't yet made up my mind if either of these TV productions should be considered the official portrayal of the sinking of the Titanic in the main Toobworld. There's yet to be a TV mini-series about the subject written by 'Downton Abbey' creator Sir Julian Fellowes and timed for next year's centennial observance - that may sway my vote. Plus there are all those portrayals in other TV show, mostly the time travel related ones, which should get precedence.

So both of these portrayals may be relegated to alternate TV dimensions.

Monday, April 11, 2011

I held off as long as I could; I really tried.I'm not a fan of the Muppet Elmo, and I didn't want him running around the halls of the TV Crossover Hall of Fame. So I held off his induction for as long as possible (He's been eligible since the Hall first began in 1999, I think.), despite the fact that he may have more qualifying credits than most of the members already installed in the Hall:

But when Elmo made the news last year because of the music video in which he starred with Katy Perry, I surrendered.

For a TV character like Elmo, talk shows are more accepted than for the League of Themselves, because Elmo is truly a fictional character interacting with real people who treat him as if he really exists.

And Elmo has also made appearances in other TV dimensions. Here he is in the 'West Wing' dimension:

And here's he's found in the Springfield of the Tooniverse:

Someone out there on the InterWebs would like us to believe that there is an Elmo in the Evil Mirror TV Dimension:

Elmo seals the deal by appearing on TV with a couple of other members of the TV Crossover Hall of Fame:

(And that's the official Santa Claus from the main Toobworld, to boot!)

And so, begrudgingly, Elmo is to be finally accepted as a member of the Hall.
﻿﻿

'Top Chef', even!

Traditionally, puppets are usually inducted in June, but I didn't want to share my birth month with him. I figured the month usually dedicated to the Foolish would be appropriate.

Oh well.... I guess I'm no longer the only fuzzy red one in the TV Crossover Hall of Fame*.....

Just An Old Cowhand On The TiVo Grande

As the Trickster once said, "Reality is boring, that's why I change it whenever I can."
I'm just "The Man Who Viewed Too Much", and "Inner Toob" is a blog exploring and celebrating the 'reality' of an alternate universe in which everything that ever happened on TV actually takes place.
Most of my theories about the TV Universe come from thinking inside the box and thus can't be proven. But I've never been one to shy away from a tall tale.....
Remember: "The more you watch, the more you've seen!"